From knit hair bows to ballet flats and ditzy pastels, the Gen Z trend cycle has produced yet another core for us to decode: coquette. Somewhere between Rococo and Y2K, we find our youngest generation embracing everything hyper-feminine. A scroll through your FYP and you’ll find outfits of the day that appear to be sourced from the closet of The Virgin Suicides.

Originally defined as a woman who flirts with men, coquette is nearly as old as internet culture itself, born in the Tumblr years of Lana Del Rey lyrics. In today’s context, coquette emerged to viral status as the sibling to cottage core.

Characterised by traditionally feminine aesthetics like baby pinks, flowy skirts and petite bows, this style embodies a sense of gentleness and sweetness. To the untrained eye, the look and feel of coquette might trigger alarm bells. For most of us, it’s all the overly “girly” aesthetics from our childhood we were taught to reject or perform. Danger likely rings as it looks to be playing into the sundress fetishes, baby doll looks and all the other unserious tropes of femininity. You’re not alone if you find yourself reasoning, Don’t they know they’ll never be taken seriously?

Fashion, of course, is so entangled with our social fabric that it’s never that simple. From 60s bohemia to high heel theory, our fashion cycle is always riddled with insight into our collective culture. In the case of coquette: we’re confronted with the complex relationship Gen Z has with femininity.

Perhaps, coquette isn’t young women regressing back to mainstream femininity, but retreating from it. After years marked by the rise and fall of the Girlboss, Gen Z femme fashion has revolted completely against masculine aesthetics. To Gen Z, coquette’s gentle prints, soft colours and romanticism offer an earned respite to the years they’ve endured. In fact, only 12 or so months ago, you could find the same creators that show their coquette outfits, donning oversized blazers and men’s slacks as women's fashion experienced corporate wear chaos.

The Big Blazer coincided with the final years of the Girlboss age, where a masculinised version of femininity ruled supreme in matters of style and state. Led by the likes of Elizabeth Holmes and Sophia Amoruso, the Big Blazer style of the late 2010s marked a greater moment of mainstream feminism, associated with rich white women getting richer and ImWithHer politics. In the years since, Gen Z has become disillusioned with an agenda focused on Forbes Rich Lists, infographics and feminist falsehoods.

It’s here where coquette emerged as a maximalist explosion against the harsh lines and rigid silhouettes the Big Blazer came to represent. It traded utility and monotone colours for fun mule heels and excess, as celebrated on the runways of Sandy Liang, MiuMiu and Simone Rocha. This style lets young women reclaim what’s been deemed frivolous or futile before and move to accept femininity - in their own terms.

More interestingly, a lot of today's fashion pushes the features of feminine aesthetics to the extreme, like Molly Goddard’s tulle skirts or Sandy Liang’s capacious scrunchies. Coquette takes the most fetishised pieces of girly fashion like knee socks, pigtails and school skirts, and reinvents them to a campy extreme. We shouldn’t forget that coquette originates from toxic ideas of white femininity, but these recent iterations continue to leave the space for non-abled bodied cis whiteness. We can’t be fooled by the gentle demeanour, coquette swings the pendulum of style away from the realm of menswear with joy, dare and grit.

After years of idolising SHE-O power stances and power suits, it can be jarring to witness such a clashing take on femininity trending. But it’s not a rejection of women’s empowerment or a step backwards. Instead, coquette celebrates the feminine after we’ve spent years chastening it. Maybe it is embracing a style that was first dreamed up in male fantasies, but so was hustle-cultured suits wear. As our political consciousness learns that being one of the boys isn’t the peak of empowerment, why can’t our fashion?

The irony of coquette’s momentum is that we know this generation isn’t made up of gentle girls. In fact, they have some of the highest rates of political engagement out of any generation. Despite the fear-mongering of our childhood, the hyper-feminine hasn’t made these women dumb or docile.

Hopefully, this style sub-culture reflects a push by Gen Z to broaden, destabilise and humanise our understanding of women - alike TikTok’s fixation with girl failures, Fleabag-tropes and villain-eras. A push that offers the space and grace to not serve a world order that rarely serves them. This fawning over extreme feminine fashion punctuates the end of girlboss agenda and the beginning of a brand-new age. Coquette tells us that Gen Z isn’t interested in just assimilating into a man’s world. Instead, they dream of reshaping or even ruining it - but all on their own terms.

Words: Kitty Lloyd

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